News

Tolkien's son pans Lord of the Rings films

Watch the trailer for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, filmed in the wilds of New Zealand

Family refuses to meet director Peter Jackson after saying he made trilogy
into 'action movies'

The work of JRR Tolkien has become “a monster devoured by its own popularity”
according to his son Christopher, who has broken his silence for the first
time in 40 years to pan the blockbuster films that have “eviscerated” his
father’s literary works.

Speaking to Le Monde newspaper, 87-year-old Christopher Tolkien, who settled
in the south of France in 1975 and is the official executor of JRR
Tolkien’s, estate said the Lord of the Rings trilogy meant that his father’s
work has become “absorbed into the absurdity of our time”.

“The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has
become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic
and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one
solution for me: to turn my head away,” he